Rembrandt's Mirror (17 page)

I considered this; she hardly looked like starvation was a problem.

She studied my face. ‘Have you felt desire?'

I could feel my colour rise and this seemed answer enough for her.

‘So have I,' she said, ‘a long time ago.' She was still looking at me intently. ‘What did you do when you felt it? Did you feed the fire?'

I thought of the kiss in the studio many weeks ago. ‘No, I put it out.'

‘I see,' she said. ‘But some fire is necessary – remember we keep one going in the hearth.'

I was growing irritated. ‘What are you telling me?'

‘You've resolved to keep putting out the flame in you, but it's God's flame too. You're stifling the very life in you.'

I looked at her and glimpsed how she must have been, when she herself still loved. But what of her warnings that I must not make the mistake she made and fall pregnant? Where was the sense in her contradictory counsel?

She spoke again. ‘You'd better decide if you want to be a whore or a virgin.'

‘I want to be neither,' I said.

‘Then you'll have to be something of your own making, but most people won't see you for who you are; they can only think in terms of what they know. To them you will be either virtue or vice.'

‘What do you see when you look at me?' I asked.

She studied me again. ‘I'll show you what I see. Go and lie on the bed.' I was frightened of her now. She had something to prove and I might merely be the means to prove it. But I was far too curious. So I lay down on the quilted bed.

She spoke quietly. ‘Loosen your limbs until you sink into the bed.'

Tiredness crept up on me with a softness.

‘Now imagine a man coming through the door. A man you like.'

There he was, standing in the doorway wearing his painting coat. I could even smell him.

She continued. ‘He's walking towards you, sits down next to you. Can you feel his warmth? He lies down beside you and kisses you. He goes to lie on top of you.'

‘No,' I said.

‘What?'

‘I don't want to play your game.'

‘Oh,' she said, genuinely puzzled. ‘Don't you want to study the flame? We're only making a little fire. It's quite safe.'

‘It's not that,' I said.

‘What is it then?'

Something was bursting out of me – I did not know what I was saying but the words came anyway. ‘I want something more, something brighter, a shining light that pierces the heavens.'

She laughed, walked over to the bed and put her arms around me. I thought this strange but I returned her embrace, my bosom
against hers. Then she put her hand on my heart. I felt a growing warmth inside. I had not been held for a long time. I hugged her closer. Her hand was still there on my heart, on my breast. Her touch changed. Her hand enveloped my breast. I stayed against better wisdom, a sensation between my legs keeping me there, a flame, first soft then violently alight. She pressed my flesh the more, causing a throbbing that spilled into an ache, reaching up deep inside me.

She let go of me and went back to her chair. ‘There,' she said. ‘There's more colour in your cheeks now. That was lust, my dove, perhaps not so bright as to pierce the heavens but still it's what keeps you and the world breathing. The church, remember, is full of withered old men. Now, time to go. I'm expecting a man who wants some of that.'

‘But what about you?' I wanted to say, for I remembered that she felt nothing, but she quickly ushered me out.

I staggered back home, in a state not much different from the other drunks and no closer to knowing what I'd wanted to ask her, let alone what the answer was.

In the Depth of Winter

He'd been looking at me for quite a while before I realized I'd pulled a strand of hair out from under my cap and was winding it around my finger. I let go of it. He smiled with a kind of curiosity. Titus was not back yet from school so Rembrandt and I were at lunch on our
own. I noticed that his beard was made up of many different colours, including red. The morning sunlight brought them out.

‘Rika.' It was the first time in a while he'd used the familiar form of my name. ‘I've been wondering whether Six is right and I should emulate Gouvert for at least an evening?'

‘What?' I said.

‘Not his tedious, tight-arsed brushwork but his panache for entertaining guests.'

‘Oh,' I said, thinking with terror what this would mean for me.

‘I've got an appetite for painting their faces again. So perhaps it's time to get them to part with some guilders. Six thinks a dinner is a good idea.'

I supposed it was – given that he was barely breaking even.

‘I thought we could come up with a list of fancy ingredients for a lavish banquet – curly cabbage looks nice, doesn't it?'

‘Yes,' I said, ‘but I'm not sure if it's what you would serve to impress.'

‘True,' he said. ‘Rose water – I heard you flavour cakes with it; that'll have them guessing.'

‘Yes, that's good,' I said, and made a note.

He took the pen and paper from me, brushing my skin accidentally. But could a hand capable of painting light reflections the size of pin pricks do anything unintentionally? He started making scribbles on the paper, then something recognizable, a mouse. This was also the hand that had touched Geertje and now it was innocently holding a pencil. There was no outward sign of its encounter with
her flesh. Was the hand guilty of the sin? Now it transformed a white sheet of paper into a beautiful drawing and had it not painted many pictures of our saviour, inspiring devotion in anyone who laid eyes on them? Did virtue reside in his hand, his heart, his brain or any other part of his body? Surely the sin was attached to him – no more and no less – than the blessing of his ability to render God's word in paint.

‘Don't buy any parsnips – they taste like a dung beetle's ball at this time of year.'

No, I thought, the hand was just a hand. Dung beetles rolled dung, that's what they did. I was a woman in possession of a body. Bodies responded to bodies, just as mine had when Petronella knew how to minister to it. If God had not wanted the dung beetle to roll dung, why did he give it a love for such dirty work?

‘You must get saffron, Rika, it sweetens rice and colours it the most golden of yellows.'

There was a knock on the door; not a plain knock but a fist rapping with insolence. I ran upstairs to open it. Rembrandt followed; like me he must have thought something was wrong. A man dressed in black burst in past me with the words, ‘I must deliver this to the master in person.'

‘I am Rembrandt.'

The man handed him the letter and walked straight out again. Rembrandt read the missive there and then, his face transfiguring itself into a fortress. ‘That greedy, never-satisfied sultana. She wants to milk me for more.'

‘Who?' I said.

‘The old carp, it says here, is suing me for breach of promise to marry her and this is the summons to the hearing. And,' he took a deep breath, ‘she pawned the jewels – Saskia's jewels. Remember she agreed to leave them unencumbered so they could pass to Titus, when at long last she relieves this good world of her presence. Of course a contract means nothing to her.'

He tore up the paper. ‘As long as there's an opportunity she'll put a spoke in the wheel. She thinks she can get the better of me. But not this time.'

I didn't like to hear him speak like this. ‘But what can you do?' I said.

‘How dare she . . .' he muttered, as if he had not heard me.

‘She's probably struggled to make ends meet and therefore had to pawn the jewellery. Sixty guilders a year is hardly a sum to survive on.' He glowered at me but I continued. ‘If you offer her a decent amount of money she won't have to trouble you anymore.'

He turned his back on me, wandering off next door, making me regret my words, but then returned.

‘Perhaps you're right.' He picked up one of the torn pieces. ‘There's an address on here. Send word that she should come with a witness in order to re-negotiate terms.'

It took a few moments for the sound of his words to assemble into intelligible meaning. I could not believe he'd taken my counsel. He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed it and left. I felt that I'd moved up in the ranks.

Geertje arrived a few days later with a witness, whom I later learned was the cobbler Octaef Octaeffsz. Rembrandt did not wish me to be present, and neither did I. After they had left, he told me that he'd reached an agreement with her but that it had been like having hairs slowly pulled from his temples.

Exactly one week later we all piled into the notary's tiny, dingy room. Everything – floor, walls and ceiling – was fashioned from the darkest wood and for some reason the place reeked of fish oil. It was like being in the belly of Jonah's whale. There was exactly a chair each, lined up against the walls. Thus we sat, with hardly enough air to breathe.

Geertje and her witness were on one side, me and Rembrandt on the other. For someone who liked to stretch out his legs he had them pulled very close to his body and his hands folded in his lap. The notary's chair stood against the third wall, separating the parties. He had lit a single candle on a side table to augment the light from the tiny window and began by assuring everyone that he had drafted the document according to the new agreement between Rembrandt and Geertje. Only the signing remained to be done.

I would have signed anything just to get out of that stuffy little room. The notary was about to read out the text when Geertje started shifting in her chair and exclaimed, ‘I won't listen to this thing read out.'

‘Come, come,' said the cobbler, patting her arm, ‘no harm in hearing it read, is there?'

At this she seemed to quieten down and the notary read out his draft. It was similar to the previous version except that Geertje was promised an additional one-off payment of 200 guilders with which she was to redeem the jewels, and an annual sum of 160 guilders, a generous improvement on sixty. During the reading her face grew red and her hands curled into fists.

The notary had barely said the last word when Geertje stood up and proclaimed with her index finger stabbing the air, ‘This is a piece of piss out of a cow's arse. I won't sign such a thing!'

The notary looked with raised eyebrows at Rembrandt, who looked at the cobbler, who looked at Geertje. She was gesticulating wildly to embroider a torrent of language that would have made a sailor blush. Rembrandt gripped the arms of his chair but said nothing. And then the cobbler – blessed be his honest soul – said, ‘But Geertje, these are all things you agreed yourself in the last meeting.'

‘What if I get ill and need to get a nurse?' she said.

Rembrandt said with effort and through gritted teeth, ‘I'm sure we can accommodate your concerns in this draft, as long as we can get this dealt with today.' He turned to the notary. ‘Can you propose a wording?'

The notary scratched his head with the end of his quill and said, ‘The applicant is willing to adjust the amount, at his discretion, should this be required due to a change in Mevrouw Dircx's circumstances, such as illness. With some luck the court might be moved to uphold the last agreement.'

Everyone was nodding, as if we could pull Geertje into agreement by our tide of nods.

‘At
his
discretion,' she laughed, pointing at Rembrandt. ‘If it was down to
his discretion
he'd see me shipped to the Far Indies. No – ill or well – he owes me more than a hundred and sixty guilders.'

She stepped close to Rembrandt, so close that he couldn't have got up even if he'd wanted to. For a moment I thought she might spit on him but she merely looked down at him. Then she turned around and left and the cobbler scurried after her.

We all leaned back into our chairs and drew a collective breath. Then the notary said, ‘A shrewd woman, with a penchant for theatre. She probably knows she might get more in court than a hundred and sixty guilders and that you would do anything to avoid public embarrassment. She'll be hoping for a better offer from you and if it is not forthcoming, then her attendance here today will still work in her favour.'

‘How's that?' said Rembrandt.

‘The court favours reasonable plaintiffs. Now she can demonstrate that she has at least made an attempt to resolve matters amicably.'

Rembrandt groaned and put one hand over his eyes as if trying to shield them from some horror.

The notary said, ‘Not all is lost. I'll redraft the agreement, taking care of the concern she voiced regarding her getting ill. This will show you to be reasonable. Either she accepts it or she won't and we'll go to court.'

The two men shook hands. And we were finally free to leave the stinking belly of the whale.

Geertje, of course, turned down the new draft, so a few weeks later we found ourselves at court. I'd imagined something more grand but it was a sober, medium-sized room, completely unadorned. There was a small area to the side, fenced off with wooden rails, where family and friends were seated. I was there on my own. On the other side were public benches filled almost to capacity and at the front was a raised area with a desk, occupied by the three commissioners of marital affairs. I recognized the grey-haired men as wealthy burghers who could easily have counted amongst Rembrandt's clients. Now they never would.

Geertje was called upon to present her case. She took to the floor like a commander to the decks of a man-of-war. Her voice was clear and calm and as she spoke she looked at each of the commissioners in turn. ‘Rembrandt made verbal promises of marriage and gave me this ring. Further I declare that he has slept with me on several occasions and I request that I may be allowed to marry Rembrandt or alternatively that he support me.'

The chief commissioner turned to Rembrandt and asked him to comment. Rembrandt waited for Geertje to be seated again, rose to his feet and said, ‘I deny having made promises of marriage and, with respect, I do not have to admit that I have slept with Mistress Dircx. It is for her to prove it.'